Drugmaker Novo Nordisk enacts worldwide hiring freeze for non-critical job roles
"We currently have a hiring freeze in non-business critical areas," the company said in an emailed statement.
Investors in July wiped $70 billion off the drugmaker's market value, after Novo - which became Europe's most valuable listed company following the launch of Wegovy in 2021 - issued a profit warning and named a company veteran as new CEO.
The company's new Chief Executive Mike Doustdar told Danish broadcaster TV2 in an interview earlier this month that he would consider layoffs as part of upcoming cost savings.
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The Independent
3 minutes ago
- The Independent
Premier League sets summer transfer record 11 days before window shuts
The Premier League 's total expenditure during the summer transfer window has reached a record £2.37bn after Leeds completed the £18m signing of Noah Okafor from AC Milan. Data from shows that top-flight clubs have already surpassed the previous record of £2.36bn – which was set in 2023 – and have already spent over 12 per cent more than last summer, when the total was 'just' £1.97bn. And with 11 days until the window closes and some potentially huge deals still to be signed, the league is on course to surpass the £2.5bn mark after deadline day on 1 September. Premier League spending dwarves that of Europe's other leagues, with the league's clubs spending more on transfers this summer than all of Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and La Liga teams combined, according to the BBC. Serie A has the second-highest spend at the time of writing, with a total of £783m as of 18 August. Champions Liverpool have headlined Premier League spending, with the Reds completing over £200m worth of deals including spending £69m on Hugo Ekitike and a move for Florian Wirtz that could become a British record of £116m if all add-ons are met. In addition, the Reds saw a bid worth £110m for Alexander Isak turned down earlier this month. Elsewhere, Manchester United paid up to £73.7m for Benjamin Sesko and up to £71m for Bryan Mbeumo, while Arsenal are on the verge of a £67.5m deal for Eberechi Eze. Six clubs have broken their own transfer records this summer, with Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth, Brentford, Burnley and Sunderland joining Liverpool in paying a record sum for a player. Plenty of Europe's top clubs have been active in the market too, with Atletico Madrid having spent over £150m and clubs including Juventus and bayer Leverkusen surpassing the £100m mark. The biggest signing outside of the Premier League was Bayern Munich's capture of Luis Diaz from Liverpool, in a deal worth £65.5m.
The Guardian
4 minutes ago
- The Guardian
WH Smith's US adventure is now stuck in an accounting hole
This is how, in retail-land, to shatter your credibility with investors in one short statement: confess to a significant overstatement of profits related to the recognition of payments from suppliers. This stuff is sensitive – witness the upheaval after an episode at Tesco a decade ago – and basic. While it is normal for retailers to receive payments from suppliers related to the volume of goods sold, or promotional activity, accounting rules are strict. The sums must be booked as they are earned. In a multi-year agreement, payments cannot all be taken upfront. WH Smith's last annual report was also clear that the principle should be straightforward to put into practice: 'The level of complexity and judgment is low in relation to establishing the accounting entries and estimates, and the timing of recognition.' Thus a £30m profits overstatement in WH Smith's North American division – 'largely due to the accelerated recognition of supplier income' – is enormous in the context of the size of the operation. The estimate of headline trading profits in the unit this year has been slashed from £55m to £25m. Group-wide profits should still arrive at £110m this year because the UK operation – think shiny shops in airports and railway stations, rather than the now-sold dusty high street stores – is still bigger. But the 42% fall in the group's share price on Thursday, equating to almost £600m in terms of stock-market value, still looks more than justified. North America was meant to be the gleaming growth opportunity for WH Smith. The promise, after the sale of its UK high street shops, was for a pure 'global travel' retailer with a single-minded focus on expanding its presence. Its US business takes in a tech and gadget format, InMotion, plus stores for other retailers. About 40 shops were opened in US airports last year on the way to making the division 'an increasingly significant part of the group', as Carl Cowling, the chief executive, put it. At least for now, the expansion plans are intact and it's just a question of correcting the accounting errors and waiting for Deloitte, a freshly appointed independent reviewer, to run a forensic check on all the supplier contracts. Well, let's see. These types of accounting cock-ups rarely become smaller on closer inspection and the affair raises questions that Cowling, chair Annette Court and the board haven't begun to address. For starters, WH Smith investors will want a comprehensive account of how the financial controls could have failed so badly that more than half this year's promised profits from the US could evaporate in one swoop. Then they will want to know the degree to which the US operation is dependent on supplier payments. What would returns look like without them? As Peel Hunt's analyst said: 'Bigger questions remain about the margin structure of the US businesses.' Come back in November for WH Smith's full-year numbers and its complete version of what went wrong. Until then, the shares – now at the lowest in a decade – look like dead money. The US rollout plan requires projections shareholders can believe.
Telegraph
29 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Want a used electric car? A simple battery test would provide consumer confidence
'It says it will do 226 miles and it has 84 per cent charge,' said my friend of the Polestar 2 he was considering buying. 'Does that mean the battery is in good shape?' I told him I had no way of knowing for certain, but I could make an educated guess – that this would equate to a real-world range of around 270 miles, suggesting the battery on this two-year-old car was roughly as healthy as it had been when new. Its state of health looked good. But that guess depended on countless variables: how heavy-footed the previous driver had been; how often it had been rapid-charged; whether it had been fully or partially charged each time; even the weather on that particular day. And since battery degradation is the main concern for anyone buying a used electric car, there has to be a better way than guesswork to gauge exactly how well a battery is still performing. Simple test Of course, there is a better way. A battery state-of-health (SoH) check is a simple test: plug a scanner into the car's diagnostic port, interrogate the software, and the battery management system will provide a readout of the percentage of the battery's original capacity that remains. State-of-health certification could be a boon for British car dealers, who are currently struggling under the weight of an oversupply of electric cars. For years, government incentives have heavily favoured EVs as company cars, flooding the new car market. Yet seemingly little thought has been given to what happens when these cars return from their leases and enter the used market. EVs dumped on dealers Used car buyers are becoming more open-minded about EVs, but there's still a way to go – and there aren't enough ready to take the plunge to fully absorb the huge number of EVs being dumped on dealers. 'There still seems to be division between those who are open to EVs and those who would rather walk,' says Ashley Winston, the director of vehicle sourcing company Palmdale Car Finders. 'But this divide is definitely reducing. 'I think people are realising that EVs will be the vast majority of options in the future and are just accepting it. So buyers are indeed becoming more open-minded – but not massively. 'Additionally, it's difficult to see the effect on the used EV market because there is still a glut of cheap used EVs. I think that the over-supply will last for a long while.' This over-supply is having an effect on trade-in values of EVs that return to the used market later on. 'A lot of dealers still refuse to stock EVs,' Winston explains. 'Those that do will only buy them for stock if they are very cheap, which makes sense as EVs depreciate. If we have an EV to trade out, we expect very low offers.' Buyers' concerns So could SoH testing make a difference? Certainly, buyers are worried about the potential for battery degradation in used EVs. A 2023 survey of 2,000 British drivers by the Green Finance Institute found that 62 per cent of those who said they wouldn't buy a used EV named their main reason as their concern about battery lifespan. It's a concern shared by dealers – 45 per cent of whom say that they would avoid bidding at auction on used EVs that don't come with any information on their battery health, according to recently released research by trade-to-trade auction site Dealer Auction. Some auction houses have cottoned on to this fact. BCA, for example, now offers battery health scores on its EVs. So why shouldn't dealers be compelled to pass on this same level of reassurance to buyers? 'I'm not sure how realistic it is that this becomes law,' says Winston. 'I think that if that were to happen, non-franchised dealers would struggle purely with the equipment needed to generate an EV battery health report. 'The reality is that this will be a change and the used car industry doesn't handle change well. That said, an EV battery certification is just an add-on to a pre-approved preparation process anyway. Some might say it's simpler than needing an oil and filter change. 'That would open up the market for an independent company to offer such a service to dealers. In reality, it's just a plug-and-play option. I suspect the technology is there to do it remotely, too.' Why isn't battery SoH a regulation? There's a chance that regulation might not even be necessary. Some dealers are starting to recognise that a SoH certificate is a useful sales tool. Scan the classified adverts for electric cars and you'll already find some with mentions of a certified battery health figure. 'Dealers have been slow to adopt it,' says Winston, 'but hopefully more franchised dealers will start doing so soon. I don't know any independent dealers which offer it yet, though.' And if the dealers don't get there, the manufacturers may beat them to it. The latest Toyota bZ4X electric car, for example, has an option in the instrument binnacle menu to display the current SoH, enabling potential buyers to check with no more than a few button presses from inside the car. It's one of the first models to do so – but there's a strong chance that more will follow. Preaching to the converted Winston remains unconvinced that SoH certification will be a silver bullet to get second-hand buyers more interested in EVs. 'Range and charging are still the biggest objections,' he says. 'Although I don't think battery certification will move that many more people to buy an EV, I do think that battery certification will be of importance for people who have already decided to buy an EV.' Either way, if the Government wants to incentivise people to make the switch into EVs, it would do well to remember that it's no good foisting them on new car buyers without some sort of strategy to deal with those cars when they arrive on the second-hand market at the end of their lease. SoH certification might not be the be-all-and-end-all, but it would certainly remove the guesswork for buyers of second-hand cars who do decide to go electric – and that might in turn help to incentivise a few more to do so.
